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Late goals by Parenteau and O'Reilly rally Avalanche past Devils 2-1 in overtime

Colorado Avalanche\'s Tyson Barrie controls the puck as he is checked by New Jersey Devils\' Ryan Clowe, right, during the second period of an NHL hockey game Monday, Feb. 3, 2014, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun)
Author: The Hockey News

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Late goals by Parenteau and O'Reilly rally Avalanche past Devils 2-1 in overtime

NEWARK, N.J. - After watching the Colorado Avalanche struggle to generate offence for more than 57 minutes, coach Patrick Roy rolled the dice and pulled goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere with 2:30 left in regulation against the New Jersey Devils.

The gamble paid off big.

PA Parenteau scored with 1:47 left in the third period and Ryan O'Reilly had a power-play goal 28 seconds into overtime to give the Avalanche a stunning 2-1 victory Monday night.

"Why wait?" Roy said after Colorado extended its winning streak to four games and posted its 13th win in 17 games (13-3-1). "Who said we have to pull the goalie with 1 minute in the game. I thought that was the right time and I thought we started generating more offence. I thought they were tired and it was a great window of opportunity there."

Once Giguere went to the bench, the Avalanche mounted constant pressure and Parenteau knotted the score by deflecting a shot by defenceman Tyson Barrie past goalie Cory Schneider.

That deflated the Devils and their fans. Michael Ryder made a bad play a minute later and defenceman Andy Greene slashed Matt Duchene to prevent a breakaway with 42 seconds left in regulation.

The man advantage carried into overtime and O'Reilly ended it by tipping Duchene's pass by Schneider for his 21st of the season.

"Tonight we showed great resilience," O'Reilly said. "We stuck with it the whole game. That was a big play by PA Parenteau tying the game, and it gave us a ton of momentum going to OT."

It marked the third straight game in which New Jersey has given up a late goal to force overtime. The Devils have lost their last two.

New Jersey easily could have had a bigger lead, with three shots hitting the post and another stopping on the goal line.

"It's unlucky until it keeps happening over and over and over again," coach Pete DeBoer said. "I don't know. I don't know if it's unlucky."

Fourth-line wing Ryan Carter scored in the first period for New Jersey, which can't afford to keep giving away points if it wants to make the playoffs.

"Tonight for me the story is we have to find a way to get a second and third goal," DeBoer said. "We got a goal from our fourth line, which is a bonus goal. We had enough chances to get five. You let anybody hang around in this league long enough, bad things happen and that's the story lately."

Giguere finished with 27 saves in winning for the first time since starting the season 7-0. He also had the iron working for him.

"I'll take a little luck now—I need it," Giguere said. "I did get lucky a few times tonight. We worked hard enough to get the two points at the end."

Schneider, who had the NHL's second-best goals-against average (1.91) entering the game, only had to make a few good saves until the final minutes.

His best stops came on a chance in close by rookie sensation Nathan MacKinnon in the first period and another in close by O'Reilly in the third.

The Devils' goalie also was a little lucky. A third-period power-play shot by Gabriel Landeskog hit off defenceman Bryce Salvador and went just wide of the net.

But the Avs finally found the answers late.

Carter got his fifth goal of the season on a quick counterattack after Duchene lost the puck at the blue line in the Devils zone. Stephen Gionta carried the puck into the Colorado zone and fed Steve Bernier, who found Carter coming late for a shot that beat Giguere.

Given a rare start with Semyon Varlamov getting the night off, Giguere had help from the iron all night. Michael Ryder hit the post with 12:30 left in the first period and Dainius Zubrus deflected a shot by Mark Fayne off the post with 4 seconds left in the period.

Zubrus also clanged one off the post on a short-handed shot late in the second period, and Jaromir Jagr had a shot that stopped on the goal line early in the third.

NOTES: Devils D Anton Volchenkov missed the game with a lower-body injury sustained against Nashville on Friday night. ... New Jersey activated D Peter Harrold and he was back in the lineup after missing 25 games with a broken foot. ... The Avalanche will play the Rangers, Flyers and Islanders on the road before the Olympic break.

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ECHL defenseman Anthony Calabrese is “lucky to be alive” after a “careless, reckless” hit, and Tyler Murovich, who delivered the blow, has been given a 12-game suspension as a first-time offender.

There are few plays scarier than seeing a player hit from behind and sent headfirst into the boards. That kind of play is made that much harder to watch when knowing the severity of the injury suffered.

During an ECHL contest on Nov. 24 between the Norfolk Admirals and Atlanta Gladiators, ECHL veteran Tyler Murovich delivered an incredibly dangerous shove to the back of Anthony Calabrese, a 24-year-old defenseman who’s only 12 games into his ECHL career.

The result of the hit was frightening. Calabrese was left laying face down on the ice, near motionless. The Admirals rearguard would eventually be placed on a stretcher, taken from the ice and transported to hospital.

That may seem harsh to some given that Murovich is a first-time offender, but given the severity of Calabrese’s injury, it actually seems like a somewhat light punishment.

As a result of the hit, Calabrese suffered broken C7 and T1 vertebrae. In simpler terms, he broke both his neck and his back. Oh, and he also punctured his lung. In fact, Calabrese told The Virginian-Pilot’s Jim Hodges that doctors told the young center that he’s “lucky to be alive.”

“It was a miracle, and they say I’m going to make a full recovery,” Calabrese told Hodges. “It’s going to be a long road, but I’d rather be alive than be in a wheelchair the rest of my life.”

What helped Calabrese escape with his life, he told Hodges, was advice he had gotten early in his career from a high school coach. Calabrese was taught that if he was ever going into the boards head first to lift his chin and turn to the side in an attempt to avoid taking the brunt of the impact with the top of his head.

“That’s honestly the only thing that registered in my mind when I was going in: at the last minute, pick my head up,” Calabrese told Hodges. “I remember picking my head up and turning it to the right.”

Thankfully, doctors told Calabrese that he can eventually return to the ice and that the injuries suffered from the hit won’t cost him his career. His spinal cord, he told Hodges, wasn’t damaged due to the hit. And, as hard as it may be to believe, doctors said it was the “best possible break” in a situation such as Calabrese’s.

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Philip Larsen got knocked unconscious, the Canucks retailiated without knowing what happened, and they could have hurt their teammate even worse in the process.

The incident was horrific. We can all agree on that.

Tuesday night in New Jersey, Vancouver Canucks blueliner Philip Larsen skated behind his net to retrieve a puck. He had no idea Devils left winger Taylor Hall was pursuing the same puck. They collided heavily. Larsen bashed his head on the ice and was knocked out cold.

It was a scary scene, undoubtedly, one that understandably evoked a ton of emotion from Larsen's teammates. It was hardly a surprise to see a flurry of Vancouver players swarm Hall and make him fight.

It was a shame, however, for multiple reasons. First off, the hit wasn't dirty. It wasn't even a deliberate bodycheck. Hall leaned back on his skates to slow his momentum and held out his arms as if protecting himself from imminent impact. It was more of a crash than a bonecrushing hit. We can debate whether Larsen's head was the principal point of contact – I don't believe it was at all – but it's irrelevant when assessing Hall's guilt. There was no intent there. He won't be disciplined by the NHL for an accident.

And yet, thanks to the sport's culture of immediate and forceful vengeance, Hall had to fight anyway. In the spur of the moment, in the heat of elite competition, players are simply too jacked up to take a breath and assess the situation. They see a comrade fall and, in mere milliseconds, seek and destroy whoever caused the harm.

“You always have a problem with a hit when one of your guys gets hit hard," Canucks coach Willie Desjardins told the Vancouver Province's Jason Botchford after the the game. "It doesn’t matter if it’s a clean hit. You have a problem when a guy gets hit that hard. I think all coaches would.”

The ironic thing about this tough-guy mentality is that it could end up pushing one of the toughest things about hockey out of the game: good, clean hits. If the swarm mentality goes on much longer, the only guys willing to lay opponents out with big hits will be those ready and willing to drop the gloves right afterward. Sooner or later players might decide it's not worth sitting five minutes and/or risking injury just to put a lick on a guy. And, in Hall's case, he wasn't even trying to drill Larsen.

Will we ever stop seeing players attacked after clean hits? I doubt it. The revenge assault is a crime of passion, a snap decision. But maybe, just maybe, the Canucks and players all over the world can learn a bit from what happened right after Larsen got hit. Watch:

The first instinct, sadly, is not to help Larsen, but to destroy Hall. Center Michael Chaput immediately starts a fight. That causes a pileup of players from both teams – all around the unconscious Larsen. It's downright disturbing to see him getting kicked in the head by his own teammates’ skates. Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom tries to box out Larsen and keep him safe. Markus Granlund tries as well but has to step over and onto Larsen in the process. It’s a miracle Larsen wasn’t cut. None of that would've happened had Chaput thought of Larsen first.

The ugly scene is a reminder that, right after a teammate takes a massive hit, the first priority should be to protect him. The best way to do that isn't to attack his attacker. It's to attend to the teammate first. There's plenty of time to review what happened and take down the perpetrator's number for later in the game. That's what jumbo-tron replays are for. And, in cases like Hall's, the violence would be averted altogether if players watched the replay and realized it was an accident.

Sadly, the idea is a pipe dream, and I don’t expect players to learn from Larsen's fate anytime soon. But we can always hope.

Blackhawks emergency backup Eric Semborski gets his own rookie card

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Blackhawks emergency backup Eric Semborski gets his own rookie card

Eric Semborski landed himself the opportunity of a lifetime when he strapped on the pads as an emergency backup for the Blackhawks, and now Topps has commemorated the moment with a Semborski trading card.

Eric Semborski’s dream came true when he stepped on the ice as an NHL goaltender, albeit an emergency backup, on Dec. 3, and now he’s got an incredible piece of memorabilia to show for it.

Just days after the 23-year-old made his rookie debut, trading card company Topps has unveiled the official Eric Semborski rookie card. That’s right: the 23-year-old has his very own trading card. The card is part of Topps’ NOW series, which features milestone or memorable moments and are made available shortly after the achievement.

Semborski’s stint as the Blackhawks emergency goaltender came due to regular starting netminder Corey Crawford was sent to hospital to undergo an appendectomy. The Blackhawks were scrambling to find a replacement for Crawford, and a backup for Scott Darling, when they started asking around to find an emergency amateur netminder to fill in.

Semborski, a former goaltender at Temple University, was working with children at the Flyers’ practice facility when he was called to sign on for emergency duty. Hilariously, Semborski wore a Blackhawks No. 50 jersey — which most will recognize as Crawford’s number — when he took the ice for warmup. Of the chance to stop NHL shots in warmup, Semborski said it was the best moment of his life.

Possibly the only thing that could have made the moment better was if Semborski actually got into the game and, as it turns out, that was very nearly the case. Post-game, Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said that had the Flyers scored on the empty net to stretch their lead in the Saturday afternoon contest, he would have thrown Semborski into the net for the final minute of the outing.

As for the card, there’s no chance it will be worth anything near what a Connor McDavid rookie card will be worth in a decade, but it’s certainly a nice piece of merchandise for the one-day NHL netminder.

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Coyotes’ Cunningham alert, awake and joking with teammates, but remains in hospital

There’s still no word as to what exactly caused Coyotes AHL captain Craig Cunningham to collapse on ice, but the 26-year-old was in contact with teammates and cracking jokes earlier this week.

More than two weeks after collapsing on the ice ahead of an AHL game between the Coyotes and Jets AHL affiliates, news has come that Craig Cunningham is starting to get back to his old self.

According to Tucson’s KVOA, Cunningham spoke with two teammates, Brandon Burlon and Christian Fisher, via FaceTime earlier this week, and both said that things are starting to look up for the 26-year-old Cunningham.

Fisher added that it was nice to see Cunningham, the captain of the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate Tucson Roadrunners, smiling again. But he wasn’t just smiling, he was also trying to have a good time with his teammates while hinting that he wants to get back on the ice.

“He was cracking jokes just as if he were here the next day," Fisher told KVOA. "It was pretty funny. He said he wanted us to come pick him up and take him to the rink. He was joking around. Stuff like that.”

The mystery still remains as to what caused Cunningham’s collapse, however. It came just moments before the game was set to start and resulted in medical staff in the building cutting away his equipment in order to attend to him. Cunningham ended up leaving the ice on a stretcher, was transported to hospital and he remained in critical but stable condition for much of the past two weeks.

Still, though, Burlon and Fisher said that there’s no “definitive answer” as to what caused Cunningham’s medical emergency. That’s more than all right with both players, too, so long as Cunningham’s health is starting to look up.

"What we do know is that he is doing well and we are moving forward here," Fisher told KVOA. "Hopefully, he will start the road to recovery now.”

Cunningham has suited up for 319 AHL games over the course of his career, netting 101 goals and 203 points, as well as scoring an additional three goals and eight points in 63 NHL games. He was drafted 97th overall by the Bruins in 2010, but was picked up by Arizona off waivers from Boston during the 2014-15 season.